The default grip on the firemonkey splitter is a circle. Is there anyway to redraw the grip to something else? Styles don't seem to have any affect other than changing the color scheme. I tried intercepting OnPaint but that only seems to allow one to redraw the background.
If the grip can't be changed is there an alternative third-party firemonkey splitter that anyone is aware of?
XE12:
drag&drop a rectangle to another control on your form that allow the rectangle as a sub control. (not directly that wont work!)
after that move it the splitter (that works well) with client align and modify the rectange as you like and at least set HitTest=false on rectangle.
The entire area of the splitter control responds to mouse events. That is the image of the grip has no special significance when moving the splitter via the mouse. Therefore use the OnPaint event to redraw the entire splitter control and include any necessary decoration that represents the grip.
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In my app I use NSSplitView which has ability to switch between vertical and horizontal layout using - (void)setVertical:(BOOL)flag method. The problem is that when user change layout, splitter always restore its position on 50%/50%.
NSSplitView has an autosave possibility for its divider, but it doen't save values for both layouts.
What is the best way to handle this? Save subviews rects in NSUserDefault on every resize and splitter move and restore them when layout switched? Is it looks good? Is there a better solution.
Unfortunately, autosave doesn't work with splitter position (not sure why). I ended up doing exactly what you suggested: saving rects in NSUserDefaults.
Additionally, there is excellent BWToolkit with its Split View, which should work OK with regards to split position. Keep in mind though, that plugins are not (hopefully yet) supported in version 4 of our IDE ;-)
How do you make the button with overrided WM_PAINT transparent. So that you could see the form through it in all places except where something is drawn. At the same time avoiding the flicker.
I saw examples with SetBkMode(HDC, TRANSPARENT), using NULL_BRUSH, examples with CompatibleDC and BitBlts, but I'm not quite sure which is the correct way to go, and also, how it behaves when WM_CLIPCHILDREN is set on the parent window. Most of the experiments I did had some weird behavior as well. Can't find a good documentation on WM_ERASEBKGND/WM_CTLCOLOR/WM_PAINT/WS_EX_COMPOSITED/WS_CLIPCHILDREN/etc internal relations on MSDN at all.
Does anyone know where I could read about this topic with all the gotchas associated?
mmm, I've never found anything close to a authoritative document on this topic.
This just serves as my rather random memory dump trying to get controls to "play nice", when animated, on a window that was either skinned (normal non client area with a bitmap background), layered (to get a window with custom non client edges with drop shadow effects) or with extended Aero Glass (via the DwmExtendFrameIntoClient) effects.
SetBKMode(... TRANSPARENT) just ensures that text rendering does not fill in the background of the text with the current bk color.
WS_EX_COMPOSITED causes windows to paint the parent and all child windows to a back buffer when the parent is invalidated, and then paint the back buffer. This is flicker free, but NT 6.0 introduced the desktop window manager which does not honor WS_EX_COMPOSITED.
WS_CLIPCHILDREN prevents the child windows and the parent window painting the same area twice. But is contra indicated if you need to use group boxes, or tab controls.
WS_CLIPSIBLINGs could be useful if child windows overlap and cause flicker. again this style is useless if you need to use group boxes or tab controls.
The other problem with WS_CLIPCHILDREN is you can't paint a background in the parent widnows window proc and rely on a NULL brush to reveal the skin. You can return a brush from WM_CTLCOLORxxx messages to coerce some of the standard controls to paint their background with your skin bitmap.
WS_EX_LAYERED is another style that makes windows buffer the painting of your parent window. But the layered windows painter does not paint child windows at all, so you need to manually paint the child windows by sending WM_PRINTCLIENT messages. Not all controls support this message.
WPF gets around the lack of back buffered painting and alpha support by not creating actual child windows at all for its buttons.
Final take on the situation:
With a little work you can get a skin behind most standard controls easily. WS_CLIPCHILDREN and no background painting on the parent will mimimize flicker. Handle WM_CTLCOLORxxx to fill the background on the controls.
If you are using Group Boxes or TabControls to frame other controls you absolutely must get the Z-order correct if using WS_CLIPSIBLINGS.
By sending controls WM_PRINTCLIENT messages, and some subclassing, you can get standard controls to paint onto a DIBSection, which you can then manually (or use DWM worker functions) repair the alpha channel of, and then paint onto a layered window, or a window with extended aero glass. This is even flicker free, but controls that don't support WM_PRINTCLIENT, or frequently update themselves outside of WM_PAINT, will not display correctly.
I am trying to create an interface for my application using Qt Designer. I want it to have a tabbed, ribbon-style set of controls at the top, and a MDI-style area with docked windows which I plan to show and hide depending on which tab of the ribbon is currently selected. I am just beginning with Qt Designer as well as Qt4 itself for that matter so I'm not quite sure how to setup the window, which widgets and layouts should I use etc.
It's quite obvious there should be a QTabWidget at the top, but I'm not sure about the bottom. Should I use a QFrame? A QMdiArea? A dock widget? What layouts can I use to make sure the tab widget has a fixed height, occupies the whole width of the window at all times and the bottom area scales as the window is resized?
I've read in the manual that splitter layouts allow for manual adjustment of the size of the widgets they contain, but I can't drag the box size of a widget after I place them inside a splitter. Thus I'm unable to setup the area below the ribbon. Anyone, help?
You should look into the QMainWindow and check the multiple utilities it can provide you (Toolbar, StatusBar, DockWidgets, CentralWidget, etc...).
The way I understood your case is that you will always have the MDI Area visible, and that the tab bar will only be used to change the dockWidgets. Here's how I would do it.
The centralWidget of the mainWindow would be a QWidget with a QVBoxLayout containing a QTabBar widget first (up) and a QMdiArea under it. The sizes should be handled automatically.
This will allow the user (or you) to dock widgets on the left, bottom, top or right areas of the mainWindow's central widget. Keep pointers to the dockWidgets to be able to move and show/hide them at will.
Hope this helps.
VTK Designer, which is built on Qt, has a Ribbon-ish interface. You might take a look at the source code for reference.
I want to use a free form shape (e.g. A partially transparent image) as a window backgound without the standard close and maximise buttons. Like the widgets do. Is that possible in OSX? I could not find any info on that or an app that uses this.
Thanks
Yes. You can do this by subclassing NSWindow to make it borderless and transparent. You'll also subclass NSView to draw the visible custom shape, then use an instance of this view as the window's content view. The result will be a window whose only visible parts will be the shape your content view draws.
Here's a good article with an example.
I have a CTabCtrl subclass which I'm trying overriding WM_PAINT to perform custom drawing. The only problem is, when I change the selected tab, I get artifacts left on the dialog where the old paint code hasn't been erased before the new code is painted on top. (The standard tab controls have the selected tab appear 2 pixels bigger than non-selected tabs, so when you change from selected to non-selected, you are left with the previous paint artifacts).
What is the best way of "repainting" this area? I've tried getting the parent control's DC and BitBlt'ing that onto the child's DC, but that doesn't work because the parent DC already contains an image of this control.
Do you override the WM_ERASEBACKGROUND message as well? You should probably do that and erase the area in the control.
You could use DrawThemeParentBackground to draw the background (XP and later) if you don't want to replace all the drawing logic.